The impact of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 upon Protestant institutions of higher education

Protestant institutions of higher education and their presidents are a diverse and complex group with a wide variety of beliefs concerning spiritual as well as practical matters which may affect their relationship to each other and to the federal government. The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 on America's Protestant institutions of higher education and to examine whether the new law, without the expanded religious exemption, is perceived by the presidents of these institutions as impinging upon the religious liberty guaranteed under the First Amendment.;A quantitative study was conducted among a group of 517 institutions whose governing bodies agreed to participate in order to examine the presidents' perceptions of the impact of the CRRA of 1987 upon their institutions. Questionnaires were sent to presidents of the 517 institutions. Responses to the questionnaire were tabulated and carefully analyzed using two approaches in categorizing institutions. The first approach categorized institutions as either graduate or undergraduate. The second approach categorized the institutions along religious lines, as either Independent or Other Protestant. Chi-square analyses, which made no assumptions about distribution of the population, showed that in many areas Independents and graduate institutions viewed their institutions as being similarly impacted by this new legislation.